PPod

Does anyone have any experience with WxWorks realtime Weather Product offered by XM Satellite Radio?

Thinking of linking it up with my Northstar 6000i but the whole thing will cost 2k.

Any feedback would be appraciated ...

Thx,

P-Pod

gerg

I have the PC version, it took some tweaking to get everything set up right, but that was the price for having a computer on a small, relatively open boat.

For weather events that can be picked up on nexrad radar, I give it an A+. It's very nice to see weather boundaries in nearly real time.

For weather advisories, I'll still give it an A. Weather zone forecasts (basically NOAA text forcast info) is also pretty good.

For buoy information, I give it a B. The refresh frequency can really elongate so you may be looking at data 4-8 hours old under some circumstances.

For sea state, it's probably a C. The wave height predictions aren't all that accurate but it is useful to get a sense for where the highest seas are and when they will develop/subside.

For Sea Surface Temp, they get an F-. If there was a lower grade, I'd choose that. SST is a joke. It's neither close to reality nor useful. I've seen it on serius, and it's much better. I don't even bother switching to that view. Ditto for the fish forcast - what a friggin joke.

The PC version is much more affordable. The HW kit is about $500, then you need the service agreement. You also need a PC to run it on.

fightingcouch

i have heard great things about the xm weather for the north stars my freinds are raving about it.

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gerg

The weather portion is great, I just hate the SST feature on the PC version.

But I could swear that Northstar uses Sirius weather, not XM, are you sure it's XM?

It's also possible that northstar processes the raw data differently than the PC version. My big gripe on the PC version is 2-fold. First, it doesn't pixelate the data like Sirius, so you don't see individual data cells.

What XM does is to create temp contours - continuous temp contours. The problem with that is they won't nest contours to any degree of precision (a hundred miles maybe), so you end up with this great big average. The water just doesn't work that way. Eddies don't appear and all you see is a blob. Pretty, but useless.

Second, they use some computer model to guess at what the temp in a given location is based on a very small mount of real data - they never show cloudcover for example. The models could use some work

Sirius does a better job, they pixeate the display rather than building a contour map and it looks like they send more data to the receiver. So the result is you can see the edges of a break and the main body of a large eddy.

I think XM's problem is sat badwidth. The have one feed for the entire country, and they have a lot of marketing fluff in that data stream so real data get's squeezed out.

So the end result is a useless display for fishing. It might be ok for general interest, but forget about using it for finding breaks or eddies.

chainsaw42

i have xm/wx on my garmin and i have to agree w/gerg's assesment...good and bad.

i know northstart makes nice stuff, but $2k seems outrageous. you could add a second, standalone garmin plotter w/weather for less than that, and you'd have a backup gps as well.

PPod

Thanks again for you feedback gents ...

One last question?

For SST, I use OceanTemp and Realtime Navigator. They're pretty good but I can't access they're website Offshore.

Does Sirius or WXWorks update SST info. more often than the on-line services? If not, then it doesn't really make sense to get it at all.

Would you agree?

chainsaw42

see gerg's asessment of wx worx SST...he unfortunately is right-on.

xm 'updates' SST often, very often (i'll say every 20 minutes), but that only means they are sending the latest info from wx worx. if the latest info from wx worx is 24 hours old, then that is what you will get...every 20 minutes.

on top of that, i don't think the information has near the resolution required to be useful on the water. it will give you an idea of the general temperature of an area of water but is not going to put you on a break....which is the point.

maybe it will improve over time?

carlynewlondon

Northstar does use Sirius but both Sirius and XM use the same people for the forecasts.

If you go ofshore and want SST's what you get from either service is better than nothing but not by much. If you want to use it for deciding where to go in the first place its useless. If you haven't had a clear shot rom Oceantemp in 5 days and your out on the water and its been clear all morning you might want to take a chance and run to that break 15 miles to the east.

I do like the sea state/ wind forecast on Sirius, I have the plan that gives you current, 1, 2, 6, 12, 24, 36, and 48 hour look aheads. They have on more service that adds 72 hours as well. NOAA forecasts over a broad area and they seem to localize tings mucch better. I'm kind of a nut when it comes to weather and I like to see all my sources in sync with each other before I go, this is just one of the equation and it is nice to get it updated while of shore.

If you want (near) real time SST's off shore invest in a sat phone and hook up your laptop for the latest down load.

gerg

I should have mentioned that I consider it a safety feature more than a fishing aid. When you go 70+ miles offshore and spend the night, weather can sneak up on you if you bet wrong. At least with the sat service you can keep an eye on systems moving from quite a distance, wave forecasts, changes in barometric pressure, fronts moving, and wind shifts. Heck, you can even check the weather on the west coast.

Also the ability to dodge t-storms is nice as well.

Hopefully, none of that will be needed. But it's nice to know it's there.

And as Jay said, with a sat phone you can at least call roffers or whatever service you use and get a pointer or two on where the water may be, even if you don't have it connected to a computer.